Eugene Horowitz

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Eugene Horowitz is a fictional character in the Nickelodeon animated television series Hey Arnold!. He is basically a jinx (similar to Li'l Abner's Joe Btfsplk). He's not particularly good-looking, not really popular, lives in poverty, and he has the most rotten luck of anyone in Arnold's world. In fact, his fortune is so awful, he seems to be the exception to Arnold's rule that "every dork has his day" (even on his birthday, all of Arnold's do-overs went wrong one way or another). In the episode "The Headless Cabby," it is shown he has excellent aptitude at clog dancing.

What makes Eugene truly unique, though, is his ability to be happy and optimistic no matter what happens, even if the rest of the people around him are covering their eyes. A hidden talent of Eugene's is singing, as seen in Hey Arnold!: The Movie and "Eugene, Eugene!" (he's cast as the lead in a musical). His optimism and singing talent are featured in the episode where he, Harold, and Arnold get stuck in a tree. While Harold starts panicking and Arnold becomes annoyed, he just continues to sing, "Every seed grows into a flower, every minute turns to an hour" accompanied with motions. He is also known to idolize a TV hero known as "The Abdicator," who he temporarily hated when he discovered that the Abdicator was just an actor named Maurice, but liked him again after he and another boy were saved by Maurice. After falling or accidentally hurting himself, he is known to utter his catchphrase "I'm okay!" in a feeble voice.In the episode "False Alarm" Eugene is accused of pulling the fire alarm and is taken to school court. Later in that episode it reveals that Curly really pulled the Fire alarm for revenge on Eugene for destroying his favorite pencil.

Arnold has inadvertently added to Eugene's misfortune several times---killing his fish, destroying his bike, etc. This once caused Eugene to conclude that Arnold is a jinx, as every major misfortune Eugene had involved Arnold.However in the episode Mugged Arnold rescued Eugene from him getting his mallomars and chocolate chip cookies stolen from him by three street robbers. But many misfortunes in Eugene's life alluded to (but not seen on the show) were not involved with Arnold; nor were the many minor accidents (crashing his bike, falling down, etc.) that he experiences every time he appears. The possible reason for his bad luck is that he was born on Friday the 13th (revealed in "Friday the 13th"). Accident-prone Eugene is the subject of most of the scrapes, bruises, and general misfortune in the series. Eugene also means "born lucky" which is ironic.